Play with USB 3 at all? It is crazy fast actually in bursts it can outperform most hard drives data transfer rates. It is still very pricey, but as with all tech the price will only drop. But I have to agree, FW 800 is pretty sweet.

Play with USB 3 at all? It is crazy fast actually in bursts it can outperform most hard drives data transfer rates. It is still very pricey, but as with all tech the price will only drop. But I have to agree, FW 800 is pretty sweet.

Never seen USB3 on anything. But I'm betting FW1600 will be better when it appears (:

Wow I'm glad this subject came up ... I'm looking for an external HDD for backup of my laptop and I see a lot of the newer units having Firewire 800 ... does my Dell XPS M1530 laptop support this? I know a little about computers but this isn't one of them ...

Wow I'm glad this subject came up ... I'm looking for an external HDD for backup of my laptop and I see a lot of the newer units having Firewire 800 ... does my Dell XPS M1530 laptop support this? I know a little about computers but this isn't one of them ...

if it looks like this m1530 then yes - its the port labeled 1394

however, that type of firewire port is an 'unpowered' port so you need to buy an external drive that comes with its own power supply - as opposed to one of the very nifty 'laptop/portable' external drive that just pulls 5v off of the port

Wow I'm glad this subject came up ... I'm looking for an external HDD for backup of my laptop and I see a lot of the newer units having Firewire 800 ... does my Dell XPS M1530 laptop support this? I know a little about computers but this isn't one of them ...

You'd have to look at it and see. I dunno much about Dells. I see it comes with "Firewire" but I can't see if it is 400 or 800. My guess is its 400.

Dell guy: problem with buying a "budget laptop" is you get budget components. Firewire 800 is more of a premium component. The hard drive enclosures that have FW 800 typically cost a fair chunk more too, but they're worth it in my opinion, if you're using the drive for backups or other purposes that involve large chunk-sized data transfers (for example, I just used mine to backup about 60GB and it took very little time).

Quote:

one of the very nifty 'laptop/portable' external drive that just pulls 5v off of the port

This is exactly right. The thing that makes a portable hard drive so portable is not having to have a power supply or extra cable or whatever - and it's really nice to just slip a small and light drive into your laptop bag.

It has FW800, eSata, and USB 2.0. It was also $80. You can get a much cheaper one if you get FW400 instead of FW800 (only $50), but even that one is expensive compared to USB2.0 only enclosures. It's just a matter of how long you want to sit there and wait and how often you use it.

But with your laptop, you're stuck with FW400, and since you have the unpowered port, "stuck" even more so ):

But if you're looking for enclosures of any kind - keep in mind that cheaper is not always better!!! The super cheap enclosures use ****ty components and are prone to failure. I have a whole stack of them here. I don't buy them anymore (: